India’s tryst with climate action

Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier put forth a volley of measures that India would take to cut down on carbon emission. The plan that was put forth is not only ambitious but also a challenge to the bigger carbon emitters such as China to come forward with an effective plan to deal with the carbon emission.
PM elaborated India’s plan last year at the 26th Conference of Parties (CoP26) held in Glasgow and said that the country will get its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 and at the same time will meet 50 per cent of its energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030.
India has also committed to reducing the total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes from now onwards till 2030 and the reduction of the carbon intensity of its economy by less than 45 per cent while setting that target of the year 2070 when India will achieve the target of Net-Zero in carbon emission.
However, on the ground, the spending on taking the measures to tackle climate change continues to be less even as the Government has put forth a plan for boosting the Electric Vehicles’ sector that might be aimed at not only bolstering the sector, but also a step towards cutting down the carbon emission. But the same is going to be a long battle and demands the initiation of several other measures to tackle the problem of climate change to run in parallel.
On the other side, Climate Action Tracker—which is an independent research group tracking Governments across the globe concerning climate actions—has tagged India’s efforts in the direction as highly insufficient and has demanded more be done for the achievement of the targets.
On the front of spending, the country continues to invest less to fund climate action. As per estimates, India has spent $19 billion on average against $170 billion every year—the amount which needs to be increased if the goals that have been set are meant to be achieved. As of now, as the temperature of the earth continues to increase due to human activities, India needs to step up its efforts and at the same time invest more in climate action to play its pivotal role which has the potential of affecting the entire region